Annu. Rev. Psychol. 1999. 50:109–35
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DEDUCTIVE REASONING
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P. N. Johnson-Laird
Department of Psychology, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey 08544;
e-mail: phil@clarity.princeton.edu
KEY WORDS: deduction, logic, rules of inference, mental models, thinking
ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the main accounts of deductive competence, which
explain what is computed in carrying out deductions. It argues that people
have a modicum of competence, which is useful in daily life and a prerequisite for acquiring logical expertise. It outlines the three main sorts of theory
of deductive performance, which explain how people make deductions: They
rely on factual knowledge, formal rules, or mental models. It reviews recent
experimental studies of deductive reasoning in order to help readers to assess
these theories of performance.
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
RATIONALITY AND DEDUCTIVE COMPETENCE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
THEORIES OF DEDUCTIVE PERFORMANCE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Deduction as a Process Based on Factual Knowledge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Deduction as a Formal, Syntactic Process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Deduction as a Semantic Process Based on Mental Models . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
THE PHENOMENA OF DEDUCTIVE REASONING . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Reasoning with Sentential Connectives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Conditional Reasoning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Reasoning About Relations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Syllogisms and Reasoning with Quantifiers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
The Effects of Content on Deduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
The Selection Task . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Systematic Fallacies in Reasoning. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
CONCLUSIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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INTRODUCTION
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Reasoning is a process of thought that yields a conclusion from percepts,
thoughts, or assertions. The process may be one of which reasoners are painfully aware or of which they are almost unconscious. But it is a systematic
process if it is reasoning, as opposed to, say, daydreaming.
This chapter is concerned with one sort of reasoning, deduction. By definition, deduction yields valid conclusions, which must be true given that their
premises are true, e.g.:
If the test is to continue, then the turbine must be rotating fast enough.
The turbine is not rotating fast enough.
Therefore the test is not to continue.
Some deductions are difficult, and the failure to draw this particular valid conclusion probably contributed to the Chernobyl disaster. Despite such mistakes,
the business of life depends on the ability to make deductions. Individuals differ in this ability, and those who are better at it—at least as measured by intelligence tests—appear to be more successful. If so, it is not surprising. A person
who is poor at reasoning is liable to blunder in daily life. Conversely, without
deduction, there would be no logic, no mathematics, and no Annual Review articles.
Psychologists have studied reasoning for a century. Not until Piaget, however, did anyone purport to explain how people were able to make deductions.
In his account of the genesis of knowledge, he argued that children spontaneously recapitulate the history of mathematics and arrive at formal reasoning in
early adolescence (e.g. Beth & Piaget 1966). By the mid-1970s, researchers assumed that even though Piaget’s theory might not be viable in detail, it was
right on the grand scale. People were equipped with a mental logic. The task
for psychologists—so they thought—was to delineate its principles. This approach ignored an unsettling discovery made by Wason (1966). Intelligent
adults in his “selection” task regularly committed a logical error. He laid out
four cards in front of them:
A
B
2
3
They knew that each card had a letter on one side and a number on the other
side. He showed them a conditional rule: If a card has the letter A on one side,
then it has the number 2 on the other side. He then asked them to select those
cards that had to be turned over to discover whether the rule was true or false
about the four cards. Most people selected the A card alone, or the A and 2
cards. What was puzzling was their failure to select the 3 card: If it has an A on
its other side, the rule is false. Indeed, nearly everyone judges it to be false in
that case. Yet when Wason changed the content to a sensible everyday gener-
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DEDUCTIVE REASONING
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alization, many people made the correct selections (Wason & Johnson-Laird
1972). Insofar as the task is deductive, mental logic is stymied by these effects
of content, which have no bearing on its logic.
So much for the historical introduction to the present review. Its plan is simple. It begins with accounts of what the mind is computing when it makes deductions, that is, accounts of deductive competence. It then describes theories
of how the mind carries out these computations, that is, theories of deductive
performance. The controversy among these theories is hot, so the chapter reviews recent experiments to enable readers to make up their own minds about
deduction.
RATIONALITY AND DEDUCTIVE COMPETENCE
Naive individuals, who have no training in logic, may err in tests of deductive
reasoning yet achieve their goals in daily life. This discrepancy is the fundamental paradox of rationality. Psychologists react to it in several different
ways, each of which yields a different account of logical competence (for a
philosophical analysis, see Engel 1991). This section reviews these accounts,
which are couched at the “computational” level—they characterize what is
computed but not how the process is carried out.
One reaction to the paradox is that people are wholly rational but the psychological tests do not reflect their competence. “I have never found errors,”
Henle (1978) wrote, “which could unambiguously be attributed to faulty reasoning.” The philosopher LJ Cohen (1981) has concurred that in such cases
there is a glitch in an information-processing mechanism. The strength of this
view is that it explains how it was possible for humans to invent logic. Its
weakness is that it makes little sense of genuine inferential blunders (for catalogs
of the irrational, see Sutherland 1992, Piattelli-Palmarini 1994). Deduction is
not tractable: As the number of premises increases, any system of reasoning
will eventually run out of time and memory before it reaches a conclusion
(Cook 1971). Unless the brain somehow bypasses computational constraints,
reasoning is bounded (Simon 1982). Perfect rationality is for the angels.
A different reaction to the paradox is that logic is the wrong normative theory (pace Piaget, Devlin 1997). It permits inferences that no sane individual
(other than a logician) is liable to draw, e.g.:
Ann is here
Therefore Ann is here or Ben is here, or both.
Inferences of this sort are valid, but naive individuals balk at them, presumably
because their conclusions are less informative than their premises (JohnsonLaird & Byrne 1991). Likewise, in logic, if a conclusion follows from premises, then no subsequent premise can invalidate it. But in human reasoning,
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subsequent information can undermine a deduction. Philosophers and artificial intelligencers formulate such systems of “defeasible” or “nonmonotonic”
reasoning (e.g. Harman 1986, Brewka et al 1997), but psychologists do not
know how people reason in this way (Chater & Oaksford 1993).
If logic is the wrong normative theory, what should replace it? One strategy,
advocated by Anderson (1990), is to make a “rational analysis” of the domain.
The analysis calls for a model of the environment in which the cognitive system operates, because, for Anderson, rationality is an optimal adaptation to the
environment. Evolutionary psychologists assume that natural selection is the
main engine of mental adaptation. They abandon general deductive competence in favor of specialized inferential modules, such as a module for “checking for cheaters,” which are supposed to have evolved because they conferred
a selective advantage on our hunter-gatherer ancestors (Cosmides 1989). But
psychologists cannot go back to the Stone Age to test natural selection at work
on shaping the mind. The best they can do is to use ethological and paleontological evidence to speculate about what was adaptive for our ancestors
(Cummins 1996, Mithen 1996). The strength of the approach is that it explains
success in the laboratory where a task taps into a hypothesized module and
failure where it does not (Gigerenzer & Hug 1992). But what do evolutionary
theorists do if a test fails to corroborate a module (cf Girotto et al 1989, Pollard
1990)? They can allow, like Pinker (1997), that not all modules are adaptations, or they can rewrite their “just so” story to fit the facts (Simon 1991). No
result can jeopardize evolutionary psychology. It may be a useful heuristic for
generating hypotheses, but it is irrefutable.
Another reaction to the paradox is that people have two sorts of rationality
(Evans & Over 1996): rationality1 is a tacit competence for coping with life’s
problems, and rationality2 is a conscious mechanism for normative reasoning.
The commentaries on Evans & Over (1997) are a cross section of the views of
leading researchers. Some accept the dichotomy (e.g. Ball et al 1997, Santamaria 1997), and some reject it and argue for a unitary competence based to a
first approximation either on rationality1 (e.g. Cummins 1997, Hertwig et al
1997) or on rationality2 (e.g. Noveck 1997, Ormerod 1997). There is a history
of similar dichotomies, particularly between tacit and conscious reasoning,
and “gut reactions” and deliberation. Sloman (1996) links the two sorts of reasoning to associative and rule-based thinking. The strong point of the dichotomy is that it makes sense of both competence and incompetence in life and the
laboratory. Its weakness is that it may accommodate too much.
The various approaches to competence each have their strengths and weaknesses. Perhaps the following conception distills only their strong points. Naive individuals have a modicum of deductive competence (Johnson-Laird &
Byrne 1991). The persuasiveness of an inference depends on the credibility of
its premises and on the proportion of situations that satisfy both them and the
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conclusion. The process of reasoning can lead reasoners to abandon a premise
or assumption or to abandon an inference as invalid. Conclusions, however, do
not throw semantic information away by adding disjunctive alternatives to the
premises. They are more parsimonious than their premises, do not repeat those
premises that can be taken for granted, and assert a relevant proposition that
was not stated explicitly in the premises. When no conclusion meets these constraints, then naive individuals tend to respond, “nothing follows.” Logically,
the response is wrong, because infinitely many valid conclusions follow from
any premises.
The modicum of rationality is important to achieving the goals of everyday
life and crucial for technical expertise in logic. But it is only a modicum, so it
explains why people make mistakes in reasoning, particularly in the laboratory, but sometimes in life. And it explains why tests of reasoning predict academic success, and how it was possible for humanity to invent logic. The challenge to theories of performance is accordingly to accommodate a modicum of
competence.
THEORIES OF DEDUCTIVE PERFORMANCE
This section outlines the three main schools of thought about deductive performance. The first school bases performance on factual knowledge. The second school bases it on a system of formal rules of inference akin to those of a
logical calculus. The third school bases it on mental models akin to those of the
semantic theory of a logical calculus. In short, deduction is controversial: It
may rely on knowledge, formal rules, or mental models, or on some mixture of
them (Falmagne & Gonsalves 1995).
Deduction as a Process Based on Factual Knowledge
Psychologists propose that the mind uses content-specific conditional rules to
make inferences from general knowledge. The proposal is part of two seminal theories of cognitive architecture: Anderson’s (1993) ACT theory and
Newell’s (1990) SOAR theory, in which the rules, or productions, as they are
known, are triggered by the current contents of working memory and then
carry out various actions. These actions may, in turn, add new information to
working memory and in this way yield a chain of inferences.
Knowledge plays its most specific role in the theory that reasoning is based
on memories of previous inferences (e.g. Riesbeck & Schank 1989, Kolodner
1993). Indeed, according to this theory of “case-based” reasoning, human
thinking has nothing to do with logic. What happens is that one inference calls
to mind another—a procedure that is useful in artificial intelligence (Smyth &
Keane 1995). When an activity has been repeated often enough, however, it
begins to function like a content-specific rule (cf Eisenstadt & Simon 1997).
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Knowledge certainly enters into everyday deductions, but whether it is represented by rules or specific cases is an open question. It might, after all, be represented by assertions in a mental language rather than by rules. It might even
have a distributed representation that has no explicit structure (Shastri & Ajjanagadde 1993), though it is not known whether distributed systems can acquire
the full compositional semantics needed for the representation of assertions.
One drawback with all knowledge-based theories is that they offer no immediate explanation of the ability to reason about the unknown. Even if you
know nothing about atonality, you can make the following deduction:
If it’s atonal then it’s nondeterministic.
It’s atonal.
Therefore it’s nondeterministic.
This abstract deductive competence is necessary for logic and mathematics.
Knowledge-based theories do not explain it, so we turn to alternative accounts.
Deduction as a Formal, Syntactic Process
The idea that deductive performance depends on formal rules of inference is
remarkably pervasive. It goes back to the ancient doctrine that the laws of logic
are the laws of thought. It was championed by Piaget (e.g. Beth & Piaget
1966), and it underlies several current psychological theories (Nisbett 1993).
Rips (1994) and the late Martin Braine (1998) and his colleagues (e.g. Braine
& O’Brien 1991) proposed that reasoners extract the logical forms of premises
and use rules to derive conclusions. Rips’s theory is implemented in a computer program (known as PSYCOP). Both theories have rules for sentential
connectives, such as “if” and “or,” and for quantifiers, such as “all” and
“some.” Both are based on a method in logic known as natural deduction, so
they have rules for introducing, and for eliminating, sentential connectives.
The following rule of modus ponens, for instance, eliminates “if”:
If A then B
A
Therefore B.
A key feature of natural deduction is the use of suppositions, which are assumptions made for the sake of argument. One way to use a supposition is to
show that together with the premises it leads to a contradiction and must therefore be false (reductio ad absurdum). Thus, consider the following proof:
1. If the test is to continue then the turbine is rotating.
2. The turbine isn’t rotating.
3. The test is to continue. (A supposition)
4. The turbine is rotating. (Modus ponens applied to 1 and 3)
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There is a contradiction between a premise (The turbine isn’t rotating) and a
conclusion derived from the supposition (The turbine is rotating). The rule of
reductio ad absurdum negates the supposition:
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5. Therefore the test is not to continue.
Theorists could adopt a single rule for this modus tollens inference, but it is
more difficult than modus ponens, so they assume instead that it depends on
the chain of inferential steps. The choice of rules in a theory is thus an empirical matter.
The two main problems in developing a formal rule theory are to ensure that
it is computationally viable and that it fits the empirical data. An example of a
computational difficulty is that the rule for introducing “and” can run wild, e.g.
A
B
Therefore A and B
Therefore A and (A and B)
Therefore A and [A and (A and B)]
and so on ad infinitum. Two sorts of rules are dangerous: those that introduce a
connective and those that make suppositions. One way to curb a rule is to build
its effects into another rule that is safe to use (Braine 1994). Alternatively, the
dangerous rule can be restricted to chains of inference working backward from
a given conclusion to the premises. Rips embodies this idea in PSYCOP,
which has forward rules, backward rules, and rules used in either direction.
Rips (1994) advances a Deduction-System hypothesis: Formal rules of inference underlie not just deduction but also the cognitive architecture of the
mind. His rules can be used as a programming language in which to implement, for example, a production system. The problem with the DeductionSystem hypothesis is illustrated by Eisenstadt & Simon’s (1997) counterarguments that a production system underlies cognitive architecture (see also
Newell 1990) and that formal rules can be derived from them. The critical
question is, What do formal rules contribute to cognitive architecture, as opposed to, say, productions? This issue must be distinguished from the predictions made from the particular use of the rules in “programming” thinking,
because what can be programmed by using rules can also be programmed by
using productions, the lambda calculus, or any other universal basis for computation. Until this question is answered, it is difficult to test different theories
of cognitive architecture.
Deduction as a Semantic Process Based on Mental Models
Human beings can understand the meaning of assertions, envisage the corresponding situations, and ascertain whether a conclusion holds in them. The
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theory of mental models accordingly postulates that reasoning is based not on
syntactic derivations from logical forms but on manipulations of mental models representing situations (Johnson-Laird & Byrne 1991, Polk & Newell
1995). Models can represent the world (e.g. Glasgow 1993), simulate a process
(e.g. Hegarty 1992), and yield inductive or deductive inferences (for reviews,
see Rogers et al 1992, Oakhill & Garnham 1996).
If deduction depends on models, then the process is semantic because their
construction from discourse depends on meaning and knowledge (Glenberg &
Langston 1992, Stevenson 1993, Garnham & Oakhill 1996). Each mental
model represents a possibility, and its structure and content capture what is
common to the different ways in which the possibility might occur. For example, when individuals understand a conjunction such as “There is triangle and
there is circle,” they represent its meaning, from which they can construct a
mental model of the situation to which it refers:
o
∆,
in which o represents a circle, and ∆ represents a triangle. The model captures
what is common to any situation in which a triangle and a circle are present.
Such a model may, or may not, give rise to an image, but models are distinct
from images. They can contain abstract elements, such as negation, that cannot
be visualized (Johnson-Laird & Byrne 1991).
The theory gives a unified account of deductions about what is possible,
probable, and necessary. Given the truth of the premises, a conclusion is possible if it holds in at least one model of the premises; its probability depends
on the proportion of models in which it holds; and it is necessary if it holds in
all the models of the premises. The model theory gives an account of connectives and quantifiers, including such quantifiers as “most” and “few,” and a variety of other sorts of constructions, such as spatial, temporal, and causal relations, and counterfactual conditionals (Johnson-Laird & Byrne 1991, Byrne
1997).
A fundamental assumption of the theory is the principle of truth:
Individuals minimize the load on working memory by tending to construct mental models that represent explicitly only what is true, and not
what is false.
The principle applies at two levels. First, individuals represent only true possibilities. Second, for each true possibility, they represent only those literal
propositions in the premises—affirmative or negative—that are true (Barres &
Johnson-Laird 1997). For example, an inclusive disjunction, such as “There is
a circle and/or there is not a triangle,” elicits three alternative models to represent the three true possibilities:
DEDUCTIVE REASONING
o
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¬∆
¬∆,
where each row denotes a model of a separate possibility and ¬ represents negation (see Newell 1990, for a defense of such representations). Each model
represents only what is true in a particular possibility. Hence, the model in the
first row represents that there is a circle, but it does not represent explicitly that
it is false that there is not a triangle in this case. Similarly, the second model
does not represent explicitly that it is false that there is a circle in this case.
Reasoners have only a modicum of competence—they try to remember what is
false, but these “mental footnotes” on models are soon forgotten.
In contrast to mental models, fully explicit models represent the false components in each possibility. The fully explicit models of the inclusive disjunction above are as follows:
o
¬o
o
∆
¬∆
¬∆
In fully explicit models, false affirmatives are represented by true negations,
and false negatives are represented by true affirmatives. The three fully explicit models match the three rows that are true in the truth table of the inclusive disjunction.
The mental models for a conditional
If there is a circle then there is a triangle
include a model of the salient case (the presence of a circle and a triangle). People realize that there are possibilities in which the antecedent of the conditional
(there is a circle) is false. They do not normally represent them explicitly; instead they represent them in a single implicit model that has no content, symbolized here by an ellipsis:
o
...
∆
Readers will notice the similarity to the model of the conjunction. The difference is that the conditional has an implicit model allowing for possibilities in
which its antecedent is false. A biconditional
If, and only if, there is a circle, then there is a triangle
has the same mental models as a conditional, but its implicit model corresponds to the possibility in which both the antecedent and the consequent of
the conditional are false. If reasoners remember the “mental footnotes” about
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what is false in the implicit model, then they can construct a set of fully explicit models for a conditional or biconditional. But they soon forget these
mental footnotes, especially with assertions that contain more than one connective.
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THE PHENOMENA OF DEDUCTIVE REASONING
The previous section reviewed the three principal approaches to deductive performance—the use of knowledge, formal rules, and mental models. The present
section turns to the evidence bearing on these theories. The study of deductive
performance has burgeoned in recent years (see Evans et al 1993, Garnham &
Oakhill 1994, and the new journal Thinking & Reasoning). To help readers
make sense of the plethora of studies, and to reach their own judgments about
the theories of performance, the review is organized in terms of the different
branches of deduction.
Reasoning with Sentential Connectives
Most evidence in favor of formal rule theories comes from studies of sentential
connectives. According to these theories, the greater the number of steps in a
derivation, the harder the inference should be, though other factors cause difficulty, such as the accessibility and complexity of rules. Braine et al (1984)
asked naive reasoners to rate the difficulty of each inference in a large set.
They used the data to estimate the accessibility of each of their postulated rules
and then combined these estimated parameters to predict the ratings for each
inference in the set. The fit was satisfactory. Johnson-Laird et al (1992a) used a
program to count the overall number of mental models required for each inference, and these parameter-free predictions correlated with the ratings just as
well as the post hoc estimates of Braine et al. Bonatti (1994) argued that counting models was inconsistent with the normal use of models. In fact, the theory
is not usually used in correlational studies, and it is not clear how else it could
yield predictions about the data.
Rips (1994) reported several experiments with sentential connectives, including a study of a sample of inferences in which the participants evaluated
given conclusions. His theory fitted the results satisfactorily. It also accounted
for the times that the participants took to understand explicit proofs and for
their memory of proofs: They remember sentences in the same domain as the
premises better than those in a subdomain based on a supposition. Other studies show that individuals automatically make logical inferences in interpreting
text (Lea et al 1990, Lea 1995).
There are robust differences in the difficulty of reasoning with the various
connectives. Conjunctions are easier than conditionals, which in turn are eas-
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DEDUCTIVE REASONING
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ier than disjunctions (Johnson-Laird et al 1992a, Schaeken et al 1995). Likewise, exclusive disjunctions (two mental models) are easier than inclusive disjunctions (three mental models; Johnson-Laird et al 1992a). Certain diagrams—those that make alternative possibilities more explicit—both speed up
and improve reasoning with disjunctions, but exclusive disjunctions remain
easier than inclusive disjunctions (Bauer & Johnson-Laird 1993). These results are predicted by the model theory from the number of mental models required for the respective connectives (for a global experimental confirmation,
see Klauer & Oberauer 1995). Formal rule theories contain no machinery for
predicting differences from one connective to another.
One result at first sight refutes the model theory. Rips (1994) found that an
inference of the following form based on a conjunction,
A and B
If A then C
If B then C
Therefore C,
was no easier to evaluate than one based on a disjunction,
A or B
If A then C
If B then C
Therefore C.
Contrary to the model theory, PSYCOP predicts that the conjunctive inference
should be more difficult than the disjunctive inference, but Rips (1994:368)
claims that the disjunctive rule may be “harder for subjects to apply.” Madruga
et al (1998) argue that Rips’s null result is a ceiling effect. They corroborated
the model theory’s predictions when reasoners drew their own conclusions
from these premises. They also showed that when the premises are presented
with the conditionals first, or one at a time on a computer screen, the results
corroborate the model theory even in the evaluation task. Reasoners’ strategies
may differ among the different tasks. They develop various high-level strategies in tackling inferential problems, and these strategic principles are just as
important as the underlying reasoning mechanisms (Byrne & Handley 1997;
M Bucciarelli & PN Johnson-Laird, submitted). The model theory allows for a
variety of strategies (Byrne et al 1995), but rule theories rely on a single deterministic strategy.
Conditional Reasoning
Studies of conditionals continue to focus on their four main inferences (e.g.
Dugan & Revlin 1990, Evans et al 1995):
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If A then B, A, therefore B. (modus ponens)
If A then B, not B, therefore not A. (modus tollens)
If A then B, B, therefore A. (affirming the consequent premise)
If A then B, not A, therefore not B. (denying the antecedent premise)
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Affirming the consequent and denying the antecedent are valid only if the conditional premise is interpreted as a biconditional; otherwise, they are fallacies.
Formal rule theorists argue that there are no rules for the fallacies, because they
can be suppressed by a second conditional premise, e.g. the premises
If he went fishing then he had fish for supper.
If he bought some fish then he had fish for supper.
He had fish for supper.
suppress the tendency to infer “He went fishing.” Byrne (1989), however,
showed that an additional conditional premise can also suppress valid inferences, e.g. the premises
If he went fishing then he had fish for supper.
If he caught some fish then he had fish for supper.
He went fishing.
suppress the tendency to infer “He had fish for supper.” By parity of argument,
Byrne claimed, there is no mental rule for modus ponens. Politzer & Braine
(1991) replied that the additional conditional falsifies the first conditional. But
Byrne (1991) demonstrated suppression without affecting its believability (see
also RMJ Byrne, O Espino, and C Santamaria, submitted). The tendency to
make conditional inferences is influenced by knowledge undermining the sufficiency, or the necessity, of the antecedent to bring about the consequent
(Thompson 1994, 1995). Markovits and his colleagues demonstrated subtle effects of this sort, asking the reasoners themselves to generate their own instances of these conditions (Markovits & Vachon 1990; see also Cummins et al
1991). Stevenson & Over (1995) showed that lowering the credibility of a conditional suppresses inferences from it, and they argued that the sufficiency of
an antecedent to bring about a consequence is represented by the proportion of
models in which the antecedent holds but the consequent does not.
Modus ponens is easier than modus tollens (cf the Chernobyl inference in the
Introduction). Formal rules and mental models both account for the difference.
But Girotto et al (1997) used the model theory to predict a surprising result.
Modus tollens is easier when the categorical premise is presented first than when
it is presented second. Presented first, it provides an initial negative model
¬B
so that reasoners should be more likely to flesh out their models of the conditional, If A then B, to include the cases where the antecedent is false. RMJ
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DEDUCTIVE REASONING
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Byrne & A Tasso (submitted) used the model theory to predict another surprising result. Modus tollens is drawn more often from counterfactual than from
factual conditionals. A counterfactual of the form “If A had happened then B
would have happened” calls for models of both the counterfactual situation (A
B) and the factual situation (¬A ¬B) that the conditional presupposes. Formal
rule theories predict neither phenomena.
Evans et al (1996; see also Evans 1993) proposed a useful correction to the
model theory. It had postulated that a negative assertion was likely to elicit
models of both the assertion and its corresponding unnegated proposition
(Johnson-Laird & Byrne 1991). Thus, a conditional of the form “If not A then
B” was supposed to elicit the models
¬A
A
B
The assumption was made to account for “matching” bias, which is the tendency to ignore negatives in conditionals in matching them to categorical
premises or situations (Evans 1998; cf Oaksford & Stenning 1992). Evans and
his colleagues discovered that the key to the phenomenon is the ease of grasping that one proposition refutes another. The task is easier if one proposition
explicitly negates the other than if the relation is merely implicit, e.g. “The
number is 4” refutes “The number is 9.” Hence, a conditional of the form, If not
A then B, should elicit the models,
¬A B
...
The model theory can thus revert to the general principle of truth (cf Evans et al
1998).
One intriguing developmental trend is that very young children treat conditionals as conjunctions; slightly older children treat them as biconditionals, and
adolescents and adults are able to treat them as one-way conditionals (see e.g.
Taplin et al 1974). If this result is reliable (cf Russell 1987, Markovits 1993), it is
a nice confirmation of the model theory: Conjunctions have one fully explicit
model, biconditionals have two, and one-way conditionals have three. VM
Sloutsky & BJ Morris (submitted) observed that children tend to ignore the
second clause of a compound premise, so the premise calls for exactly one
model. They are most likely to ignore the second clause of a tautology or contradiction, less likely to ignore it in a disjunction, and least likely to ignore it in
a conjunction. Even adults treat conditionals as conjunctions in complex premises. They consider an assertion such as “If A then 2 or if B then 3” to be true in
just those cases that they consider the assertion “A and 2, or B and 3” to be true
(Johnson-Laird & Barres 1994). The mental models for the two sorts of assertion are identical.
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Ormerod and his colleagues have pioneered the study of immediate inferences from one sort of conditional to another, and from conditionals to disjunctions, and vice versa (Ormerod et al 1993, Richardson & Ormerod 1997). They
argue that their results can best be explained in terms of a revised model theory.
Reasoners construct a minimal set of models of a premise to infer the required
paraphrase. Minimal sets of models reduce the load on working memory, and
they may underlie reasoning in general.
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Reasoning About Relations
Some simple deductions depend on relations, e.g.:
Ann is better than Beth.
Cath is worse than Beth.
Who is worst?
Early studies of these inferences suggested that reasoners construct mental
models (De Soto et al 1965, Huttenlocher 1968), though they are also affected
by linguistic variables (Clark 1969). Recent studies show that deductions depending on one model are easier than those depending on multiple models.
Consider the following spatial problem (from Byrne & Johnson-Laird 1989),
which in the original concerned common objects such as knives, forks, and
spoons:
A is on the right of B.
C is on the left of B.
D is in front of C.
E is in front of B.
What is the relation between D and E?
The model theory predicts that reasoners should construct a single twodimensional model of the premises:
C B
D E
A
The model supports the conclusion that D is on the left of E, which no model of
the premises refutes. In contrast, the problem
B is on the right of A.
C is on the left of B.
D is in front of C.
E is in front of B.
What is the relation between D and E?
calls for two distinct models because the premises do not relate A and C:
DEDUCTIVE REASONING
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C A
D
B
E
A
C
D
123
B
E
Both models yield the same answer: D is on the left of E, so it is valid. But the
inference depends on more than one model, so it should be harder than the first
one. Formal rule theories predict that there will be no difference between the
two problems: Their first premise is irrelevant, and the derivations depend
solely on the remaining premises, which are identical in the two problems. In
fact, reasoners drew a greater percentage of correct conclusions to the onemodel problems than to the multiple-model problems. Rips (1994:415) counters that the instructions may bias people to use images and that the irrelevant
premises may sidetrack them. Why they should be sidetracked more by the
second problem than the first is unclear. Braine (1994:245) concedes that
“much reasoning does use mental models.”
Schaeken et al (1996a) replicated the difference between one-model and
multiple-model problems in inferences about temporal relations, such as “John
takes a shower before he drinks coffee.” The difference also occurred when
temporal order was implicit only in the use of tense and aspect (Schaeken et al
1996b) and when neither sort of problem contained an irrelevant premise
(Schaeken et al 1998). Vandierendonck & De Vooght (1996) confirmed the
difference in temporal and spatial problems. They also showed that a task that
preoccupies visuo-spatial memory interferes with these inferences (Vandierendonck & De Vooght 1997). This finding contrasts with earlier results (Gilhooly et al 1993, Toms et al 1993) but corroborates an investigation of sentential and spatial reasoning (Klauer et al 1997).
Syllogisms and Reasoning with Quantifiers
Quantifiers underlie many deductions, including syllogisms, such as
Some actuaries are businessmen.
All businessmen are conformists.
Therefore some actuaries are conformists.
One controversy about syllogisms is whether individuals reason or merely select a conclusion that matches the superficial form (or “mood”) of a premise
(Wetherick & Gilhooly 1990; N Chater & M Oaksford, submitted). Another
controversy is whether, if they reason, they use formal rules, Euler circles, or
mental models. Stenning & Yule (1997) framed equivalent normative theories
of the three sorts, so the real issue is to account for errors.
Rips (1994) fitted his rules to experimental data. He also showed how the
theory might account for the results of a study in which the participants drew
their own conclusions (Johnson-Laird & Bara 1984): PSYCOP implies that
they guessed tentative conclusions to work backward from them. Yang (1997)
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JOHNSON-LAIRD
and Yang et al (1998) fitted Braine’s (1998) rules to the rated difficulty of inferences depending on quantifiers and connectives. Yang (personal communication), however, showed that the numbers of tokens in the mental models
for these inferences give just as good a fit, even though they do not require the
estimate of parameters from the data.
Euler circles represent a premise of the form “All A are B” with two separate diagrams: In one diagram, a circle A lies wholly within a circle B to represent that set A is properly included within set B; in the other diagram, the two
circles coincide to represent that the two sets are coextensive. Analogous topological relations between the two circles represent the other sorts of premises.
The traditional method calls for the construction of all the different diagrams
for each premise and all their different combinations for a pair of premises—a
demand that leads to a combinatorial explosion. Stenning and his colleagues,
however, devised a way to use Euler circles that obviates the explosion (e.g.
Stenning & Yule 1997). Ford (1995) postulates a similar procedure: Reasoners
use the verbal premises as reminders of which areas within the circles cannot
be empty. Individuals who use Euler circles can thus avoid the traditional
method in favor of one resembling the use of mental models (cf Cardaci et al
1996). One puzzle is whether people who have never seen circles used to represent sets spontaneously invent Euler circles. The main disadvantage of the
method is that it does not generalize to relational inferences, such as
All horses are animals.
Therefore all horses’ heads are animals’ heads.
The model theory of quantified reasoning accommodates relations. It postulates that individuals build an initial model from the premises, formulate a
conclusion from this model, and, if they are prudent, search for counterexamples to the conclusion (Johnson-Laird & Byrne 1991). The theory predicts the
majority of erroneous conclusions, which correspond to the initial models of
multiple-model syllogisms (Bara et al 1995). It therefore provides an alternative explanation for the so-called atmosphere effects (Shaw & Johnson-Laird
1998), i.e. the alleged tendency to draw conclusions that merely match the superficial form of a premise.
The model theory has been criticized on several grounds. Ford (1995) has
argued vigorously that some reasoners use formal rules, others use Euler circles, but no one uses mental models (for different results, see M Bucciarelli &
PN Johnson-Laird, submitted). Ford formulated a set of formal rules for verbal
substitutions, but they are equivalent to a model-based procedure proposed by
Johnson-Laird & Bara (1984). The outward signs of substitutions are silent on
whether their inward occurrence is in sentences or models.
Polk & Newell (1995) claimed that the search for counterexamples appeared to underlie few predictions: Their own model theory gave a better ac-
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DEDUCTIVE REASONING
125
count of individual differences when it dropped this component. With hindsight, syllogisms are not ideal for demonstrating a search for counterexamples.
Modal reasoning is better, because the model theory predicts a key interaction
hinging on a search for counterexamples: It should be easier to determine that a
situation is possible (one model of the premises suffices as an example) than
not possible (all the models of the premises must be tested), whereas it should
be easier to determine that a situation is not necessary (one model serving as a
counterexample suffices) than that it is necessary (all models must be tested).
The interaction has been corroborated in reasoning with sentential connectives
(Bell & Johnson-Laird 1998) and with quantifiers (JStBT Evans, SE Handley,
CNJ Harper & PN Johnson-Laird, submitted). Hence, in tasks where counterexamples are useful, reasoners appear to search for them. Indeed, Barwise
(1993) emphasized that the only way to know that a conclusion is invalid is by
constructing a model of the premises that is a counterexample to it.
Another criticism is that the model theory fails to specify how reasoners
search for counterexamples (Martín-Cordero & González-Labra 1994). Various computer programs implementing the theory contain a search procedure
(cf Hardman 1996, for a critique of an earlier program), so the problem was to
obtain relevant evidence. M Bucciarelli & PN Johnson-Laird (submitted)
therefore devised a technique to externalize thinking: The participants had to
construct external models using cut-out shapes. They were able to construct
counterexamples, that is, models of the premises that refuted invalid conclusions. In drawing their own valid conclusions, they constructed more models
for multiple-model syllogisms than for one-model syllogisms. In both tasks,
they used the same search operations as the program, but it seriously underestimated the variety of different reasoning strategies and the variety of different
interpretations of the premises (see also Langford & Hunting 1994). The construction of external models—let alone counterexamples—is beyond the
scope of current formal rule theories.
Inferences can depend on relations and multiple quantifiers, e.g.:
Some of the Avon letters are in the same place as all the Bury letters.
All the Bury letters are in the same place as all the Caton letters.
Therefore some of the Avon letters are in the same place as all the Caton
letters.
Johnson-Laird et al (1989) showed that one-model problems of this sort yield a
greater proportion of correct conclusions than multiple-model problems.
Greene (1992) pointed out a possible confounding: The multiple-model
problems called for conclusions of the form “None of the Avon letters are in
the same place as some of the Caton letters,” which are difficult for people to
formulate. He argued that there was therefore no need to postulate the use of
mental models. However, the multiple-model problems also support straight-
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JOHNSON-LAIRD
forward conclusions, such as “Some of the Caton letters are not in the same
place as any of the Avon letters.” The model theory also predicted the participants’ erroneous conclusions: They mainly corresponded to the initial models
of the premises (Johnson-Laird et al 1992b).
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The Effects of Content on Deduction
If deduction depends on formal rules, the content of inferences cannot affect
the process of reasoning, which is purely syntactic. But if deduction depends
on models, then content can affect the process, because reasoners can stop
searching for alternative models of the premises if their initial models yield believable conclusions. Most investigations of the effects of believability concern syllogisms, such as
All of the Frenchmen are wine drinkers.
Some of the wine drinkers are gourmets.
Therefore some of the Frenchmen are gourmets.
Many early studies were methodologically flawed, but recent research has established three main phenomena (Evans 1989, Newstead & Evans 1993). First,
reasoners accept more valid conclusions than invalid conclusions. Second,
they accept more believable than unbelievable conclusions. Many people, for
example, draw the conclusion in the syllogism above (Oakhill et al 1990). It is
invalid, but highly believable. Third, the effects of believability are greater on
invalid inferences than on valid ones. But when invalid conclusions are not
consistent with the premises, then the interaction disappears (Newstead et al
1992).
There are several possible accounts for the phenomena. Reasoners may rely
on mental models. They may not realize that a conclusion that is merely consistent with the premises does not thereby follow from them (the misinterpreted necessity hypothesis). They may accept believable conclusions and
only assess the validity of unbelievable ones (the selective scrutiny hypothesis). As Quayle & Ball (1997) showed, however, the model theory can be reconciled with misinterpreted necessity. Necessary conclusions are supported by
models, and impossible conclusions are refuted by them. But if a conclusion is
merely possible, then reasoners may be uncertain and so be more likely to accept believable conclusions and to reject unbelievable conclusions (cf Hardman
& Payne 1995). This account is supported by reasoners’ confidence ratings:
They are highly confident in valid conclusions, which is a good index of syllogistic competence.
One study has examined the effects of believability on conditional reasoning (Santamaria et al 1998). A pair of believable conditionals can yield a believable or an unbelievable conclusion, as in
DEDUCTIVE REASONING
127
If Marta is hungry, then she takes an afternoon snack.
If Marta takes an afternoon snack, then she has a light dinner.
Therefore if Marta is hungry, then she has a light dinner.
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The conclusion lacks the causal link (eating the snack), so it violates the normal relation between hunger and dinner. Reasoners were more likely, and
quicker, to draw a valid conclusion when it was believable than when it was
unbelievable. Hence, there may be a process of “filtering out” valid conclusions that are not believable (Oakhill et al 1990).
The Selection Task
The selection task (see the Introduction) has launched a thousand studies, but
the literature has grown faster than knowledge. Selections are sensitive to the
probability of encountering a falsifying instance, and the introduction of such
Bayesian considerations has revitalized research (Oaksford & Chater 1994,
1996; Kirby 1994; Nickerson 1996). This normative approach—inspired by
Anderson’s (1990) “rational analysis”—accounts for many phenomena, but
there is, as yet, no corresponding theory of the mental processes underlying
performance. Naive individuals are unlikely to be explicitly calculating, say,
the expected gain in information from selecting a card.
A change in the content of the selection task can yield a striking improvement in performance, particularly with deontic conditionals concerning what
is permissible (Cheng & Holyoak 1985, Kroger et al 1993). Manktelow &
Over (1991) used the deontic conditional, “If you tidy your room then you may
go out to play,” and the participants’ selections depended on whose point of
view they were asked to take. The mother’s concern is that her child does not
cheat, and those with her point of view tended to select the cards did-not-tidy
and played. Her son’s concern is that his mother does not renege on the deal,
and those with his point of view tended to select the cards tidied and did-notplay. Even children are sensitive to point of view (Light et al 1990), and adults
with a neutral point of view tend to select all four cards (Politzer & NguyenXuan 1992).
Theorists debate the causes of these effects (see e.g. Holyoak & Cheng
1995 and the commentaries thereon). Cheng & Holyoak (1985) argued that a
deontic conditional maps onto a “pragmatic reasoning schema” such as
If the action (e.g. playing) is to be taken, then the precondition must be
satisfied (e.g. tidying the room).
Cosmides (1989) proposed that there is an innate module for “checking for
cheaters” (see also Gigerenzer & Hug 1992). But Manktelow & Over (1995)
argued against both of these positions and in favor of mental models. How-
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JOHNSON-LAIRD
ever, the model theory, they say, underestimates the importance of probabilities, preferences, and pragmatics.
Because the selection task is sensitive to Bayesian considerations, one
might conclude that it does not depend on deductive reasoning. The claim is
premature. On the one hand, individuals of higher cognitive ability tend to
make deductively correct selections in versions of the task with an abstract
content (Stanovich 1998). On the other hand, deductions can yield probabilistic conclusions, and such deductions can be accounted for by the model theory:
The probability of an event depends on the proportion of models in which it occurs (Johnson-Laird & Savary 1996, Johnson-Laird et al 1998). The model
theory predicts that any manipulation that emphasizes what would falsify the
rule should improve performance in the selection task. Such effects do occur,
even in tasks that are neither deontic nor concern checking for cheaters. Instructions to check for violations improved performance in the abstract task
(Platt & Griggs 1993, Griggs 1995, Dominowski 1995). Green (1995) showed
that instructions to envisage counterexamples also improved performance (see
also Green & Larking 1995). In work that brings together the model theory and
Bayesian considerations, Green et al (1997) showed that reasoners’ assessments of how likely they were to encounter a counterexample (in four stacks of
cards) predicted their selections (see also Green 1997). Sperber et al (1995)
used a more indirect procedure to render counterexamples more relevant—in
the sense of Sperber & Wilson (1995)—and thereby improved performance.
Love & Kessler (1995) used a context that suggested the possibility of counterexamples, and Liberman & Klar (1996) demonstrated that apparent effects of
“checking for cheaters” are better explained in terms of the participants’ grasp
of appropriate counterexamples and of the relevance of looking for them.
Systematic Fallacies in Reasoning
The controversy between rules and models has been going on for a long time.
Roberts (1993) suggested that it was neither fruitful nor resolvable. Yet most
criticisms of formal rules concern their power to explain empirical results,
whereas most criticisms of mental models concern alleged shortcomings in the
formulation of the theory—it is unfalsifiable, or it is obviously false; it relies
on images too much, or it does not rely on images enough; it relies on formal
rules or it needs to rely on formal rules. These mutually inconsistent criticisms
are strange, especially for a theory systematically implemented in computer
programs. They may reflect the difficulty of grasping a different and nondeterministic paradigm.
Evidence in favor of rules and against models is hard to find. The best case
rests on studies of hemispherical differences. The lack of right-hemisphere involvement in reasoning about easily visualized content has been taken to jeopardize the model theory (see Wharton & Grafman 1998 for a review). But as
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these authors point out, the studies are preliminary, and the results count more
against the claim that models are images—a claim that Johnson-Laird & Byrne
(1991) repudiate—rather than the theory that reasoning depends on models.
Is there any evidence in favor of models and against rules? Preceding sections discussed several cases, but we turn now to a phenomenon that may be
decisive. The principle of truth, which underlies the model theory, has a surprising consequence. It implies that human beings reason in a systematically
fallacious way. Consider the following problem:
Only one of the following premises is true about a particular hand of
cards:
There is a king in the hand or there is an ace, or both.
There is a queen in the hand or there is an ace, or both.
There is a jack in the hand or there is a 10, or both.
Is it possible that there is an ace in the hand?
The mental models of the first premise are
King
King
Ace
Ace
They support the conclusion that an ace is possible, and most people draw this
conclusion (Johnson-Laird & Goldvarg 1997). They fail to take into account
that when one premise is true, the others are false. Hence, if the first premise is
true, the second premise is false, so there cannot be an ace. Indeed, if there
were an ace in the hand, then two of the premises would be true, contrary to the
rubric that only one of them is true.
Reasoners are vulnerable to a variety of fallacies in modal and probabilistic
reasoning (Johnson-Laird & Savary 1996). The rubric “Only one of the premises is true” is equivalent to an exclusive disjunction, and a compelling illusion
occurs in the following inference about a particular hand of cards:
If there is a king in the hand then there is an ace in the hand, or else if
there isn’t a king in the hand then there is an ace in the hand.
There is a king in the hand.
What, if anything, follows?
Nearly everyone, expert and novice alike, infers that there is an ace in the hand.
It follows from the mental models of the premises. Yet it is a fallacy granted a
disjunction, exclusive or inclusive, between the two conditionals. Hence, one
or other of the conditionals could be false. If, say, the first conditional is false,
then there is no guarantee that there is an ace in the hand even though there is a
king. Granted that the fallacies arise from a failure to reason about what is
false, any manipulation that emphasizes falsity should alleviate them. An ex-
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periment that used the rubric “Only one of the following two premises is false”
did reliably reduce their occurrence (Tabossi et al 1998).
No current formal rule theory predicts the fallacies: These theories rely
solely on valid inferential procedures (see e.g. Rips 1997). Perhaps a simple
procedural assumption can at least accommodate the fallacies post hoc. If not,
then they may resolve the controversy. They do not imply, however, that all
possible formal rule theories are wrong. No result could do so. As the
Deductive-System hypothesis shows, formal rules can be used to program any
computable theory, including the mental model theory itself.
CONCLUSIONS
Deduction is under intense investigation. The two dominant accounts of its underlying mechanisms are based on rules and on models—a distinction that
echoes the contrast in logic between “proof” theory and “model” theory. Rule
theorists are impressed by the automatic ease with which we make certain inferences. They formulate rules that correspond to these elementary deductions,
and they assume that more difficult inferences call for chains of elementary deductions. In contrast, what strikes model theorists is that reasoning is just the
continuation of comprehension by other means. They notice that arguments
are seldom laid out as proofs and that public reasoning is often dialectical. We
are all better critics of other people’s inferences than of our own. We recognize
the force of counterexamples, but we more readily construct models that reflect our own views than find refutations of them (Baron 1990, Legrenzi et al
1993).
Both theoretical approaches have a penumbra of protective stratagems. Yet
both have testable consequences. Psychology is difficult, but it is not impossible. The evidence suggests that naive reasoners have a modicum of deductive
competence based on mental models. In principle, rules and models are not incompatible. Indeed, advanced reasoners may learn to construct formal rules
for themselves—a process that ultimately leads to the discipline of logic.
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CONTENTS
On Knowing a Word, George A. Miller
Cognitive Development: Children's Knowledge About the Mind, John H.
Flavell
Conflict in Marriage: Implications for Working with Couples, Frank D.
Fincham, Steven R. H. Beach
Psychopathology: Description and Classification, P. E. Nathan, J. W.
Langenbucher
Deductive Reasoning, P. N. Johnson-Laird
Health Psychology: Mapping Biobehaviorial Contributions to Health and
Illness, Andrew Baum, Donna M. Posluszny
Interventions for Couples, A. Christensen, C. L. Heavey
Emotion, John T. Cacioppo, Wendi L. Gardner
Quantifying the Information Value of Clinical Assessments with Signal
Detection Theory, John T. Cacioppo, Wendi L. Gardner
High-Level Scene Perception, John M. Henderson, Andrew Hollingworth
Interpersonal Processes: The Interplay of Cognitive, Motivational, and
Behavioral Activities in Social Interaction, Mark Snyder, Arthur A.
Stukas Jr.
Somesthesis, James C. Craig, Gary B. Rollman
Peer Relationships and Social Competence During Early and Middle
Childhood, Gary W. Ladd
Organizational Change and Development, Karl E. Weick, Robert E.
Quinn
Social, Community, and Preventive Interventions, N. D. Reppucci, J. L.
Woolard, C. S. Fried
1
21
47
79
109
137
165
191
215
243
273
305
333
361
387
The Suggestibility of Children's Memory, Maggie Bruck, Stephen J. Ceci
419
Individual Psychotherapy Outcome and Process Research: Challenges to
Greater Turmoil or a Positive Transition?, S. Mark Kopta, Robert J.
Lueger, Stephen M. Saunders, Kenneth I. Howard
441
Lifespan Psychology: Theory and Application to Intellectual Functioning,
Paul B. Baltes, Ursula M. Staudinger, Ulman Lindenberger
471
Influences on Infant Speech Processing: Toward a New Synthesis, Janet
F. Werker, Richard C. Tees
Survey Research, Jon A. Krosnick
Trust and Distrust in Organizations: Emerging Perspectives, Enduring
Questions, Roderick M. Kramer
Single-Gene Influences of Brain and Behavior, D. Wahlsten
The Psychological Underpinnings of Democracy: A Selective Review of
Research on Political Tolerance, Interpersonal Trust, J. L. Sullivan, J. E.
Transue
Neuroethology of Spatial Learning: The Birds and the Bees, E. A.
Capaldi, G. E. Robinson, S. E. Fahrbach
Current Issues and Emerging Theories in Animal Cognition, S. T. Boysen,
G. T. Himes
509
537
569
599
625
651
683